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I have just spent an entire week in a country the vast majority of Westerners will never visit or even consider visiting in their entire lives: Pakistan.

Indeed, when I was leaving Dubai for Pakistan and while I was there if I was communicating with any Westerner and mentioned I was going to Pakistan, 100% of the responses were complete shock and confusion. Even when I posted on YouTube that I was sick after getting back from Pakistan, Westerners in my audience said the same thing.

“Wait… what? Pakistan??? Why are you going to Pakistan??? Why would anyone ever go there???”

Well, maybe because there’s much more to the entire planet Earth than just New York, Los Angeles, Texas, and London, you silly collapsing Westerner.

And maybe I’m not a pussy who is terrified of other countries, nor am I afraid of the possibility of getting sick for two or three days just to experience the world and achieve my objectives.

Also, there are only two regions in the world with high positive birth rates, and these two regions will dominate the demographics of the planet for at least the next 100 years: Africa and Central Asia.

Like it or not, these regions are the future, not the Collapsing West.

Half the week I spent in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and the 12^th largest city in the world with about 22 million people in the greater metro area.

The second half I spent out in the countryside in the Northern part of the country, southwest of Lahore, a city with “only” about 13 million people. (Remember what I said about birth rates? How many Western cities are this large?)

During my entire visit, I had several different hosts. Throughout this article, I will add direct quotes of what these people said in italics.

As always when I do a deep-dive analysis of countries I visit, will objectively cover both the good and the bad. With Pakistan, there’s a lot of both.

The Culture

Pakistan is very Islamic, much more so than even the Emiratis in Dubai where I live. They take Islam very seriously and while exceptions to this rule exist, they are extremely rare.

As I’ve analyzed many times, unlike modern-day Christians, Muslims deeply value and actually practice their faith. They enjoy doing things like praying five times a day or going to Mosque, whereas Christians either rarely do any of these things or treat these things as boring and tedious obligations they “have” to do.

Women and men are always covered head-to-toe. Some women show their hair and some do not.

Women dress in colorful baggy dresses or baggy pants and shirts, ensuring that you can’t see any shape of their bodies. Women can wear things like jeans but they’re always very loose and most or all of their hips are usually covered in large, low-hanging tops.

Pakistanis are the “colorful Muslims.” Very unlike the Muslims in the Middle East which are always dressed in black, white, or brown, the Pakistanis dress in all different kinds of bright colors, and the women’s clothing are covered in sparkly shit which is pleasant to the eyes.

There are no bars or dance clubs in Pakistan. Alcohol, dating, and sex before marriage aren’t allowed, and these rules are actually followed, enthusiastically so, by the vast majority of the population. Instead of dating several different people and then eventually marrying or moving in with one of them, Pakistanis choose one person in their early twenties and just get engaged, then get married.

When I asked where young people go out at night, I was told:

“What do you mean, ‘go out?’ Young people don’t ‘go out’ at night. They stay with their families.”

Quite different than Dubai where bars and clubs are everywhere and are packed every night of the week until 3 AM!

Men and women are both short and small by Western standards. Pakistanis, especially the men, are very skinny.

So there are no fat people in Pakistan but there are no fit people either. Gyms do not exist.

“We do not exercise here.”

In the Lahore countryside, I attended a wedding. Weddings in Pakistan aren’t a one-day event like in the West; they last about a week and are often celebrated for about a month. Yes, I’m serious.

In a country where enforced monogamy actually somewhat works and where divorce isn’t a thing, I guess this makes sense.

So for several days, I attended various fun wedding events. During one event the men and the women were completely segregated for most of the night, annoying the three other American guests, especially the two female ones (one of whom was Billie, since it was her operations manager who was getting married).

The People

Pakistani people are one of the nicest groups of people I have ever encountered in all of my world travels. They are all friendly, helpful, and happy. Many times my hosts asked random strangers for directions or assistance and 100% of the time these people were cheerful and happy to spend a lot of time helping out, from young kids to very old men and old ladies.

I’ve described Pakistanis before as just like Indians if you deduct the anal-retentiveness and social awkwardness. This trip has confirmed this for me. Pakistanis rank up there with the Fijians and Canadians as some of the friendliest and most relaxed people I’ve ever met.

“We love everyone, even though everyone hates us.”

Surprisingly for me, all the signs are in English in Pakistan, and the vast majority of people of all ages speak English, making it shockingly easy to navigate, especially for such a strict Islamic culture like this.

Only when you get out into the distant countryside do some people not speak English (usually defaulting to Urdu or Punjabi), but even then there are plenty of English speakers to translate.

The Food

Holy shit, some of the best food I’ve ever eaten in my life. Like many lower-end non-Western countries, food in Pakistan is real food, not a bunch of hormones, chemicals, and GMOs.

Pakistan probably has the best chicken I’ve ever tasted. Their beef is on par with Paraguay’s which is high praise. Their spices, sauces, rice, meat, everything was fantastic. They tend towards more spicy flavors which are amazing. Even the Pakistani-style pizza was fucking perfect.

The only issue I had, and one that is 100% my fault, is that during my first three days in Karachi, I ate so much of their food, and so many different kinds of their food, that my body didn’t react well (being physically unaccustomed to central Asian food) that I had some fun bowel problems and got sick towards the end of my trip.

This happened to me the first time I went to Armenia as well. If you’re a Westerner visiting this part of the world you have to remind yourself that your stomach and digestive system aren’t accustomed to food there, and you’ll pay a price if you’re not careful. During the latter few days I kept most of my diet to fruit (which tasted fantastic).

Infrastructure

Pakistani infrastructure is dreadful. Despite the fact it’s one of the few countries that possess nuclear weapons (it’s one deterrent against India) it truly is a third-world country, far worse than Paraguay and just as bad as many regions of Africa.

As a comparison, in Paraguay, if you look around enough, you’ll see pockets of true third-world status, like piles of trash on the ground and so on, but you’ll just see this in pockets; the vast majority of any city in Paraguay is perfectly livable and pleasant.

But in Pakistan, you can drive for miles upon miles and see nothing but trash covering the entire ground, even up in the trees, floating on the water, with horribly dilapidated and collapsing buildings, children playing in the dirt, angry wild dogs fighting each other in the streets, people in their 30s who look like they’re in their 60s (I’m serious), and so on.

Twice in the small towns, we drove by an entire store that was on fire. People just crowded around and watched it burn down because there was no fire department infrastructure.

The air quality is the worst I’ve encountered, even in China. I measure the AQI index everywhere I live and visit, and the higher the number, the worse the air quality. Under 50 is considered good, 50-100 is not good, and more than 100 is bad.

At this time of year, Dubai’s AQI hovers around 50, which is the high end of good. In the summer it gets to 120 or even 150, which is quite bad (which is why I don’t live in Dubai during those months).

Right now, when the air quality is the least bad in this part of the world (because of the cooler temperatures), Pakistan’s AQI is 180 to 200 and often even higher, even when you’re hours away from any major city(!).

Nearby buildings are obscured by haze. I noticed many people coughing regularly, including my hosts. I started coughing myself towards the end of my visit.

It’s really bad and I truly feel sorry for the people who have to spend their entire lives in that horrible, disgusting air.

Driving in Pakistan is the most insane I’ve seen anywhere in the world. Drivers completely ignore the lines on the road or even how the roads are designed. They drive on the lines in the middle of the road. They drive on the shoulder. They drive the wrong way on one-way streets. No one gives a shit, they just do whatever they want and they just figure it out.

I spent many hours in the countryside driving on a single-lane road where the other lane wasn’t finished so you’re driving at highway speeds with cars driving in the middle of the road in the opposite direction, coming right at you head-on at freeway speeds.

Oh, and seatbelts aren’t a thing in Pakistan. In most cars, you can’t buckle up because either the seatbelt doesn’t work or there’s nothing to click it into.

On top of that, their roads are third-world quality like Los Angeles; huge gaps, potholes, and fragments everywhere, even on high-speed highways.

So yeah, terrifying for a Westerner.

In these scenarios, I had to remind myself that these drivers were accustomed to driving like this and I hadn’t seen any car accidents, so I recalled the 2% Rule, put on some headphones, listened to 1980s heavy metal music, and enjoyed the adventure.

“Pakistani drivers are the best drivers in the world.”

In most parts of the country, they use the Asian-style toilets (or squat toilets) where it’s basically just a hole in the ground. You need to squat down, balance on the balls of your feet, do your business (if you can), try not to fall over, and try not to make a very disgusting mess.

Most Westerners don’t even know how to use toilets like this and have panic attacks when they see one (I’ve seen it happen; Westerners are such pussies), but thankfully I’ve spent enough time in China to be experienced in this area.

The airports. Oh, the airports. I had to hit several different cities in Pakistan so I was in airports quite a bit.

Landing at the airports is usually fine. Leaving the airports is also fine if you go during a time when the airport is near-empty (this happens sometimes, strangely).

But if you have to catch a flight at an airport in Pakistan when the airport is busy, which is often, then god help you.

Leaving Lahore for Dubai on my last day, I got a boarding pass after waiting in line for about 10-15 minutes; not great but not horrible.

But then I had to wait in a gigantic line for passport control. Waiting in this line took almost 50 minutes. When I was one person away from the passport desk, excited to get through the line and on my way, the electricity of the entire airport shut off. Awesome.

The guards at the computers just shrugged like it was no big deal and leaned back. Apparently, this is a normal thing that happens a lot.

I stood there, in the dark, mashed in with hundreds of Pakistanis, waiting patiently for the power to come back on. 15 minutes later, the power comes back.

I wait another few minutes, then get called up. I hand the security guy my passport and boarding pass. He takes them and starts entering stuff into his computer.

Then the fucking power goes out again.

He just looks at me and shrugs, then leans back, talking to one of his friends.

I stand there with a frown on my face. Sometimes I really miss Dubai.

I stand there for another 10 minutes. The power goes back on again. The security guy now has to reboot his computer, which takes another 5 minutes. I remind myself that this is part of the adventure.

Finally, I get through immigration. Total time spent in immigration to catch my flight: 80 minutes. Bad, though in many American cities (like Washington DC) I’ve waited 50 minutes or so as well.

White People As Celebrities

As I’ve said, white people never go to Pakistan. Due to false Societal Programming, most white Westerners are convinced that Pakistan (and any other country that ends in the word “stan”) is a murder-land of death full of angry terrorists.

So the good news is that not only the opposite of the truth, but because white people are so rare a thing in Pakistan, when people see you they are completely shocked and treat you like a celebrity.

As a huge, white-skinned, blue-eyed, clean-shaven white man, when I was in the big cities I was constantly being stared at, gawked at even, mostly by the women.

In the countryside, people mobbed us (myself and the other American wedding guests) crowding around us, excited to see a white person. Little kids would come up to me and speak English. I was constantly bombarded with questions, nicely and politely, about where I was from, things about the USA, California, Trump, New York, and the fires in Los Angeles.

The wedding planners hired three armed guards for us (shown in the picture at the top of this article) armed with semi-automatic weapons just to keep the mobs away from us to not create a scene wherever we went.

I was the only white person for most of my trip; the only time I saw one or two other white people was when I went to the tourist areas in Karachi, and that was it

“White people are easy to identify, even from a distance, because they are always fat.”

Enemies

Military-level security is extreme in many areas. Guys with big guns are a common site, similar to some South American countries.

In my five-star hotel, to gain access to it, every car is stopped, must pop their hood, and have the front and back sniffed by a bomb-sniffing dog.

In Karachi, my hosts wanted to take me to their “best beach” but it was guarded by the military. There were three of us in the car, and when they saw me, they immediately became suspicious.

When they asked (in Urdu, so I couldn’t understand) about me and my hosts said “USA,” the guards immediately turned us away, stating that the beach was for “Pakistani passport holders only.”

What the guards really meant is that they didn’t want any enemy Americans at their beach.

“We are sorry about that. We have lots of enemies. Even the USA is our enemy. India hates us too even though we like them. Only China likes us.”

It was all good in the end, we found a different beach and hung out there instead.

 

Conclusion

I loved 85% of my visit to Pakistan and I will definitely return. I learned want I wanted to learn about the people and the economy. It’s been a country I’ve wanted to visit for a very long time and I’m very happy to finally check this checkbox on the massive list of countries and cities I still need to visit.

Next on the new-places-to-travel list: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Saudi Arabia. Can’t wait!

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